Colleges Memorializing Role of African-American Schools In Virginia
By Michael Buettner
NEWS EDITOR
Two institutions of higher learning in Chesterfield County are getting involved in helping preserve the record of Virginia African- Americans’ efforts to educate themselves at a time when equal educational opportunity for black people was just a dream.
Virginia State University is hosting a conference this week aimed at creating a museum and hall of fame on the school’s Ettrick campus commemorating the Virginia Interscholastic Association. The association was established in 1954 to organize and supervise extracurricular activities and competitions among the state’s African-American high schools during the period of segregation.
From 1954 to 1969, when it was merged into the Virginia High School League after the state’s schools were fully integrated, the association helped organize athletic and academic leagues and tournaments for more than 100 high schools with a total student population of more than 40,000. Chesterfield’s one black high school, George Washington Carver in Chester, was a member.
VSU was where the association’s head office was located, and the university still holds the association’s archives, which include the records of team and individual performance for all those who participated, such as Bob Dandridge, a graduate of Maggie Walker High School in Richmond who went on to play for 13 seasons in the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks and Washington Bullets.
Dandridge will be among the speakers at the conference on Thursday and Friday at the Gateway Dining and Event Center, 2804 Martin Luther King Drive, Ettrick.
Another conference held earlier this year at John Tyler Community College in Chester, meanwhile, has sparked an ongoing project to identify and preserve some important landmarks in African-American education.
Rosenwald schools, mostly one or two classroom buildings, were built across the South between 1917 and 1932 with joint funding from local communities and the Julius Rosenwald Fund. The fund was set up by Sears Roebuck and Co. President Julius Rosenwald, a friend and supporter of Booker T. Washington.
Six Rosenwald schools were built in the county between 1917 and 1927, but none of them still stand today, according to Alyce Miller, associate professor of history at John Tyler.
Interest in the schools among some faculty members and students led earlier this year to a conference on Saving Virginia’s Rosenwald Schools. The event, co-sponsored by Preservation Virginia, drew 75 people from across the state to John Tyler’s Chester campus.
It also led to some continuing projects, according to Miller. She and some colleagues at John Tyler and Virginia Commonwealth University have obtained funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and are “working with a group of Rosenwald alumni to help preserve a school and turn it into a museum in Goochland County,” Miller said.
The work involves not only preserving the school building but also the memories of those who received an education there. Miller said her group has done about 23 oral history interviews that “really show the centrality of the school and the importance of the school in the community, and the importance of education activism within the African-American community.”
Other groups around the state are working on similar projects in their local areas, and an effort is underway to create an accurate inventory of the remaining Rosenwald schools in Virginia. Miller said Preservation Virginia estimates that only about 30 percent of the 364 that were built are still standing today.
“Lots of groups around the state are working on [Rosenwald school-related projects], and they may not know about each other, they may not know what resources are out there,” Miller said. The teams formed at the John Tyler conference are now serving as “networking resources so people can work together,” she said.
Another conference may be coming to John Tyler, but Miller said it’s still in the early planning stages.
One thing that both the Rosenwald schools and the Virginia Interscholastic Association show is Virginia African-Americans’ persistence in getting the most out of a bad situation, Miller said.
In one oral history interview, she said, a former Rosenwald student recalled “having to sit and hear the teachers talking to the other classes. He said it was an advantage, because you got to learn things before you got to that grade, but it wasn’t an advantage you’d look for.”
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| Kremlin, Virginia school built by the Rosenwald Fund for African American education. |
NEWS EDITOR
Two institutions of higher learning in Chesterfield County are getting involved in helping preserve the record of Virginia African- Americans’ efforts to educate themselves at a time when equal educational opportunity for black people was just a dream.
Virginia State University is hosting a conference this week aimed at creating a museum and hall of fame on the school’s Ettrick campus commemorating the Virginia Interscholastic Association. The association was established in 1954 to organize and supervise extracurricular activities and competitions among the state’s African-American high schools during the period of segregation.
From 1954 to 1969, when it was merged into the Virginia High School League after the state’s schools were fully integrated, the association helped organize athletic and academic leagues and tournaments for more than 100 high schools with a total student population of more than 40,000. Chesterfield’s one black high school, George Washington Carver in Chester, was a member.
VSU was where the association’s head office was located, and the university still holds the association’s archives, which include the records of team and individual performance for all those who participated, such as Bob Dandridge, a graduate of Maggie Walker High School in Richmond who went on to play for 13 seasons in the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks and Washington Bullets.
Dandridge will be among the speakers at the conference on Thursday and Friday at the Gateway Dining and Event Center, 2804 Martin Luther King Drive, Ettrick.
Another conference held earlier this year at John Tyler Community College in Chester, meanwhile, has sparked an ongoing project to identify and preserve some important landmarks in African-American education.
Rosenwald schools, mostly one or two classroom buildings, were built across the South between 1917 and 1932 with joint funding from local communities and the Julius Rosenwald Fund. The fund was set up by Sears Roebuck and Co. President Julius Rosenwald, a friend and supporter of Booker T. Washington.
Six Rosenwald schools were built in the county between 1917 and 1927, but none of them still stand today, according to Alyce Miller, associate professor of history at John Tyler.
Interest in the schools among some faculty members and students led earlier this year to a conference on Saving Virginia’s Rosenwald Schools. The event, co-sponsored by Preservation Virginia, drew 75 people from across the state to John Tyler’s Chester campus.
It also led to some continuing projects, according to Miller. She and some colleagues at John Tyler and Virginia Commonwealth University have obtained funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and are “working with a group of Rosenwald alumni to help preserve a school and turn it into a museum in Goochland County,” Miller said.
The work involves not only preserving the school building but also the memories of those who received an education there. Miller said her group has done about 23 oral history interviews that “really show the centrality of the school and the importance of the school in the community, and the importance of education activism within the African-American community.”
Other groups around the state are working on similar projects in their local areas, and an effort is underway to create an accurate inventory of the remaining Rosenwald schools in Virginia. Miller said Preservation Virginia estimates that only about 30 percent of the 364 that were built are still standing today.
“Lots of groups around the state are working on [Rosenwald school-related projects], and they may not know about each other, they may not know what resources are out there,” Miller said. The teams formed at the John Tyler conference are now serving as “networking resources so people can work together,” she said.
Another conference may be coming to John Tyler, but Miller said it’s still in the early planning stages.
One thing that both the Rosenwald schools and the Virginia Interscholastic Association show is Virginia African-Americans’ persistence in getting the most out of a bad situation, Miller said.
In one oral history interview, she said, a former Rosenwald student recalled “having to sit and hear the teachers talking to the other classes. He said it was an advantage, because you got to learn things before you got to that grade, but it wasn’t an advantage you’d look for.”
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